


please undo my chain of pain

by subgyeom



Series: yugyeom-centric collection [19]
Category: GOT7
Genre: (all the bad things are not between jinyoung and yugyeom btw), (but it was bold of me to even ASSUME that there would ever be, (edit: this fic is now gonna have a part two uwu), (gyeom is a dumbass who thinks nyoung hates him bc this was intended to be unrequited love), (the essential premise of this fic is that jinyoung is sad but yugyeom is Extra Sad), Angst, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Infidelity, Inspired by the If You Do MV, Kim Yugyeom-centric, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Requited Unrequited Love, Sad Kim Yugyeom, Sad Park Jinyoung, Unhealthy Relationships, a universe where park jinyoung isn't in love with kim yugyeom)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 00:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17233823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subgyeom/pseuds/subgyeom
Summary: yugyeom’s a lot of things.he’s the glue that keeps them together. he heals their wounds without them asking and lets them press their tear-stained faces into his shoulder and speaks when prompted and keeps silent when not. he has his good qualities, even he’ll recognise that. but he has worse, undeniably.for one thing, he’s in love with park jinyoung.-jinyoung's girlfriend cheats on him. the aftermath is not what yugyeom expected.





	please undo my chain of pain

**Author's Note:**

> mini rant ~~that's not entirely to do with the fic lmao~~ : bc pepigyeom became my otp alongside markgyeom this year i've paid a little more attention to how the fandom perceives them and i continue to be disappointed by the amount of people who write them off as jinyoung hating yugyeom with all of his heart bc it's such an off characterisation of him and their relationship?? jinyoung adores yugyeom to death, it's blatantly obvious if you watch them interact for even just five seconds lol. like their thumbs videos are pretty much them softly teasing ~~and flirting~~ with each other. i use the idea of jinyoung taunting yugyeom out of actual disliking in this simply bc it makes for good angst, but i wanted to contrast it with how he actually cares for gyeom bc i'm salty lol
> 
> ANYWAY this is my last fic of the year and the first oneshot in a while!! i haven't really been able to write much lately bc of health issues but i started this in late nov and i'm weirdly proud of myself for doing something not heartbreak boy related. the idea came into my head rewatching mvs and i just couldn't not do something with it. jingyeom are my bbys and i figured it would make sense to end the year off with them like how i started off with my other fave ship. thank you to everyone for reading my stuff uwu
> 
> (title from take me down by the rose ~~check out their dawn mini pls, it's quality chill writing music~~ )
> 
> links: [tumblr](https://25gyeom.tumblr.com/), [wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/subgyeom), [twitter](https://twitter.com/LOOKGYEOM), [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/subgyeom)

yugyeom’s a lot of things.

he’s the one who drags the baseball bat out of bambam’s trembling hands and helps bandage the cuts from broken glass. he’s the one who finds jaebeom wandering the streets with dark bags under his eyes and his chin jutting out in unleashed anger. he’s the one who curls a hand around jackson’s wrist and pulls him away from the punching bag that has blossomed hard bruises across his knuckles. he’s the one who slides another can of spray paint into youngjae’s open hand and silently praises his slightly less self-destructive method of coping. he’s the one who comes across mark in a ruffled suit with flowers at his feet and sorrow in his eyes and doesn’t say anything. he’s the glue that keeps them together. he heals their wounds without them asking and lets them press their tear-stained faces into his shoulder and speaks when prompted and keeps silent when not. he has his good qualities, even he’ll recognise that. but he has worse, undeniably.

for one thing, he’s irrevocably in love with park jinyoung.

the entrance to jinyoung’s studio is quiet. yugyeom shivers, pulling his jacket closer around his scantily clad frame. bambam had once again roped him into escaping for a night to the club down the road from his apartment, and the sheer shirt picked out for him does nothing to hide anything, certainly not the tattoos curving over his sides and the small scars hidden underneath them. he feels exposed and he was almost convinced that the prickling feeling all over his pale skin was from the chill winter air, but yugyeom knows better. when he senses something is wrong, he’s always right.  (it's a learned skill that yugyeom wish he obtained earlier. then he wouldn’t have had to deal with cracked bones and cuts both inside and out that would never fully mend.)

the first sight is of paintings. torn canvases littering the floor, rips right through a familiar face that always made yugyeom’s stomach drop when he caught a glimpse across the room. she was pretty, of course, hair curled over her shoulder and lips always painted as red yugyeom’s cheeks whenever she caught him staring a little too closely. yugyeom could, at first glance, understand why she became the centre of the world for the boy who yugyeom loved. but yugyeom knew, as he always does, that behind that facade, there was very little beautiful. unlike the warmth jinyoung managed to convey in painting after painting, her eyes were glazed over. cold. unfeeling. appearances are deceiving after all. yugyeom knows that well. (but jinyoung didn’t care when yugyeom whispered in his ear all the little things he’d noticed. he laughed away his concerns with taunting remarks that hurt just a little too much. he didn’t listen. no one does, not until it’s too late.)

the second sight was of jinyoung.

the grey suit is scarred, marked with specks of half-dry paint in flashes of black and gold and red and every colour imaginable. the little tears up the sleeve and curved around soft fingers are reminiscent of shirts ripped to shreds in cold-blooded anger and the jagged edges of broken skin. (at least jinyoung still had clothes on and unblemished skin by the end of it. at least the boy who yugyeom loves was not as ruined as the boy who loves him.) his head is clutched between hands soiled with colours and blood, the red mixing so expertly with the rest that yugyeom could almost write it away as just something that spilled more over jinyoung than others. (he had never been allowed that luxury himself, but he’d gladly pass over that benefit. the world had never been kind enough to delude him. maybe he just didn’t deserve it.) and there’s sobs raking his frame and it’s possibly the most uncharacteristic moment he’s ever witnessed.

if yugyeom was in power of damp shirts and broken boys, then jinyoung held control over a storm of rage unfurling in his gut. uncontained rage in burning eyes and a tongue as sharp as a shining knife (not blood-soaked and trailing over shattered ribs, oh no, nothing of the sort). jinyoung had the aura of an ares reborn - cunning in battle, an idiot outside of it. he could lets insults roll off his lips, as acidic as a snake’s bite. he could take yugyeom’s already foggy-with-insecurities mind and unravel it piece by piece so easily, as if he was only a pawn in jinyoung’s bigger game, so meaningless, so worthless. but the next second, and he’d be reveling in his spoils of war, so sugary sweet in his soft smile and the crinkles around his eyes. jinyoung was never not emotional, no. there’s was too much of feeling. he overflowed with it. so much so that when his fingers brushed against yugyeom’s own he felt his numb skin glow alight. he’s yugyeom’s undoing in more than one way and now he’s heartbroken, soul shattered over the studio floor and yugyeom can practically hear it crack even further under his boots.

“hyung?” yugyeom calls out hesitantly, his small but so utterly high-pitched voice barely audible. yugyeom used to laugh like the world was ending and scream for his hyungs in excitement fueled happiness and never shut his goddamn mouth. now barely anyone knows what his voice sounds like anymore and only a few know what made the bouncy dancer across the street turn mute. (it’s fear, he thinks, that is crawling up his spine, curving a hand over his quivering lips. but he’ll speak, just for them, even if he has to force himself to.) “jinyoung-hyung?” he repeats, just that little bit louder. his long figure stands awkwardly in the moonlight casted across the doorway, one hand curled over the frame and another twining a longer strand of hair in his grasp out of nervousness. (he deals with sorrow better than anyone else. that doesn’t mean he enjoys his task. he’s terrified of it all, really. he can’t even deal with his own problems, but everyone keeps piling theirs on top of his shoulders. he’d complain, but he’s contracted now. kim yugyeom, professional shoulder to cry on. it should be a joke, but it isn’t.)

jinyoung hears him. the sadness-soaked noises stop spilling out of his mouth and his face is revealed from it’s confines of being buried in his knees and yugyeom almost gasps. almost. he’s seen almost all of his friends in their worst states, seen jaebeom sprawled just over the edge of a roof and mark swallowed by a hoodie that was just a few months prior too small with a joint hanging from his lips and bambam sinking further and further into the swallowing river and youngjae locked in his apartment surrounded by mess and filth and jackson wandering the streets of hong kong with blankness in his eyes. almost all. but he’s never, not in his twenty-two years of living, seen jinyoung like this.

jinyoung, to yugyeom at least, was the epitome of perfection. royalty incarnate, like a prince with his hair swept up from his forehead and clear skin with no signs of sleep deprivation and orderly clothes wrapped around his frame. yugyeom would stand next to him with dark circles underneath his sleepy eyes and acne across the curve of his jaw, in the same flannel shirt as he wore the day before and a pair of jeans ripped beyond belief, and feel inadequate. if yugyeom had a single cruel bone in his body, he would laugh at the irony of it all. but he doesn’t and all he can feel is a kind of overwhelming pity that’s clawing its way up his throat in the form of unwanted, unnecessary reassurances. he doesn’t think he can be blamed for his own protectiveness, however. jinyoung looks like a wreck, for lack of a better word.

there’s the remnants of tears under his eyes, skin still damp and eyes still shiny. his mouth is malformed into a deep frown that carves lines around the corners and across his tensed forehead. strands of hair are crinkled over his brow and his big ears are red in embarrassment. that at least would be a cute sight if yugyeom’s heart wasn’t twisting in his chest. (the tears, the messy appearance, yugyeom knows it all well. he’s seen it many times, the sorrow reflected from the tips of their toes to the tips of their fingers. he can’t fully relate it it himself. when jaebeom found him broken, he’d been in a bright blue suit, spotless, pristine, no faults in the paleness of his skin and certainly no tears running down his cheeks. the only sign of something wrong had been the blood streaming down his fingers and the distant look in his eyes, as if haunted by something that wasn’t even in front of him.)

yugyeom slides over the floor with a dancer’s grace, carefully avoiding the canvases littered across the floor to not further puncture them with his heeled boots. jinyoung’s expression is painted lost, as if he isn’t quite sure what art studio floor he’s falling apart on or who the boy looking far too concerned in front of him is, and when yugyeom kneels and his dainty fingers press just barely against his shoulder, he flinches away from the fleeting touch. yugyeom, the yugyeom before, would have been zapped with rejection and hurt - but the yugyeom after understands, a dull sense of it, so used to it. (jaebeom had gently curled a hand around yugyeom’s delicate wrist, the skin of it pale and stained and bulging with bones. yugyeom didn’t react. there was nothing human left in him to even care if his arms prickled with discomfort and pain and _please stop touching me_. but there’s something, some remaining humanity in jinyoung, and yugyeom will cling to it with all his strength.)

“hyung, it’s just me,” he murmurs. the girl had been the opposite of yugyeom, calm and controlled without a single waver in her strong voice. she was too much. she filled the space with her words in a way that felt intruding, not the comfort of jackson’s overwhelmingly soothing tone or the happiness that encroached with bambam’s pitchy laughter. and so jinyoung softens at the sound of yugyeom’s tiny voice, lacking confidence in each single breath and trembling, so light it could blow away with a gust of wind. “do you…” he doesn’t finish it. he never does. they always know what he’s asking. _do you need my help._ a couple of years ago, he had a reputation for drowning in oversized sweaters and scrunching his nose when tickled and being the innocent one, the untainted one, who had yet to see the horrors of the world. things have changed and now he’s the one who knows too much. the desolation of the last few years have moulded him into the only one who can truly offer any support, when the childlike yugyeom would have been the one sobbing into someone else’s shoulder when faced with small hardships. god, he was an idiot back then. (the one thing that will never change, that has become intricately intertwined with his psyche, is the love he feels for the one who will never love him back.)

jinyoung scoffs, a brittle noise that contrasts with the absolute devastation painted over his features. “i’m fine, gyeom-ah.” he isn’t. his voice cracks with the effort, his typical confidence frayed as he stumbles over the words like a newborn. yugyeom tries to keep neutral in these moments, expression emotionless, but it never quite works out and he can feel his lips slip into a deep frown. it’s almost manipulative, unintentionally manipulative, and he can’t quite help the sense of satisfaction when jinyoung melts, his false bravado washing away. “sit down,” he continues and yugyeom scrambles to press his back against the wall, his long limbs awkwardly trying to avoid the mess scattered across the floor. there’s no admission of sorrow, not yet, but yugyeom knows it will come eventually. (jinyoung will break. yugyeom has no doubt about it. jinyoung may look ethereal, but he’s undeniably human, undeniably flawed, fated to break under pressure. yugyeom thinks - no, knows - that he was transformed, malformed, until there was nothing mortal left, no matter how he acts.)

jinyoung’s so different and yugyeom isn’t quite sure how to handle him. if it had been anyone else, he’d sweep them carefully into his arms, wary of his brittle bones and their sometimes outward wounds, and let them sob into his chest until their tears seeped through his shirt and stained his already frozen skin. but jinyoung breathes fire, leaves cities burning in his wake, singes the thin material of yugyeom’s jacket when he brushes against it, burns with the intensity of a thousand suns. yugyeom hates to admit it, but he’s so fucking scared of him - not that immense fear of fists and hot-blooded rage and fingerprints around his neck, but something softer, a little less fervent, not a panic of violence but a panic of realisation and knowledge. jinyoung’s smart but so fucking oblivious and if he saw more, paid a little more attention, then it would be over. the mask yugyeom crafted would shatter under his heated gaze. but he can’t stop here, can’t walk away, and so he curls his arms under the knees he presses to his chest and whispers gingerly. “what happened, hyung?”

“she cheated.” it’s a simple sentence, spoken as matter-of-fact, but it’s layered with the sentiment that jinyoung so desperately, so obviously, wants to hide away. there’s a moment of silence. yugyeom breathes into the empty space, his shuddering heart beating so loudly in his ears that he is almost surprised the other can’t hear it’s erratic pace. yugyeom didn’t know what he expected, what he ever thought was that girl’s limits, because despite it all, despite the aura that surrounded her of slick arrogance, the thought of anyone risking what they had with a man like the one crumpled beside him was peculiar. “i don’t know how much,” jinyoung’s words are blunt and blank and emotionless, but his fingers curl into a fist and his brow wrinkles with the effort of holding back the urge to punch the solid brick behind his back. “there was some guy in our bed. she didn’t even try to hide it, just laid there and looked at me.” jinyoung’s lip curls, such a brutal display of devastation on a face once so stoic and yugyeom looks on in open-mouthed horror, lip quivering at this unknown creature in front of him, terrified by the emotion and still a little soured by the devotion still present (still theirs, still _ours_ never including him). “she tried to defend herself too- _it’s all your fault, you’re never around, i needed more_ ,” he mocks in a sing-song voice, sickly sweet, dripping with honey, and it makes yugyeom’s blood boil that she’d parade around as an innocent but turn it all back around, make it jinyoung’s fault for her own decisions.

“i don’t get it, yugyeom-ah,” jinyoung rubs a hand over his face, smearing flecks of paint across his already blotched face. there’s a sense of exhaustion settling in the studio’s atmosphere, almost tangible, and it’s heavy on yugyeom’s broad shoulders. this shouldn’t be affecting him as much as it is. he’s in too deep. he’s the equivalent of a therapist and he shouldn’t be so attached to a client. but he really, truly, can’t stop his stomach dropping and his heart squeezing when jinyoung’s head tilts to the side and his dead eyes meet yugyeom’s guarded own. “why did she do this to me?”

yugyeom answers in the way he knows best - quiet and vague. “i don’t know, hyung.” it’s partially true. he’ll never be able to fully grasp that girl’s motives for killing the drive of the man he holds so dear, but he can at least guess. he’d researched it once, after the boy he’d never met had drove jackson to breaking point and mark had stumbled into his front room rambling about the girl he’d found in his lover’s arms. (they’d all experienced it. all except himself, who’d been torn apart in a more physical manner, something that cut deeper literally and not figuratively. he’s not sure what he would have preferred. in the end, it doesn’t matter that much.) loss of love, sexual desire, etcetera, etcetera. the reasons went on and on, but yugyeom had an idea that it was none of it. that girl was rotten to the core and yugyeom figured it was just her, her essence and her spirit and her experiences, all her wicked qualities, that led her to this unintentionally and unknowingly. (she caused so much pain, so blissfully unaware of it. he caused so much pain, so utterly aware of it. jinyoung faced the lips of a seductress and yugyeom crashed to the hands of an abuser. in the end, both of them can at least understand each other’s suffering from toxicity, no matter how much yugyeom begged to god for that not to be the case.)

jinyoung chuckles, mockingly, his eyebrow raising in a manner that simultaneously cockily attractive and so goddamn irritating. “don’t you know everything?” it’s so fucking condescending and yugyeom is so fucking used to it that he doesn’t even flinch. he’s been the casualty of misplaced scorn more times than he could count on his twitching fingers and this attack is nothing special. but jinyoung this time, just this once, winces in his place, fumbling over an apology. “sorry, gyeom-ah, i shouldn’t be taking this out on you.” and yugyeom tries to scramble together an _it’s okay_ , mouth about to form the syllables despite how taken back he may be, but jinyoung catches him off guard. “it’s not okay, gyeom, i’m just being an asshole.”

“you’re always an asshole, hyung,” yugyeom giggles, but the noise catches uncomfortably in his tightening throat. it’s the truth but yugyeom has never wanted it to be honesty of their friendship, because he’s seen jinyoung soft, so utterly soft with the skin around his eyes crinkling and his smiling lips hidden behind a calloused hand and his body curling in on itself with the effort of its own laughter. he’s witnessed softness and has never been the recipient of it and he doesn’t understand the look that passes over jinyoung’s features of alarmed realisation, as if he's finally registered something that’s been staring him in the face for far too long. there’s quiet, again, awkward and suffocating, and jinyoung’s eyes are fixated so seriously on the curve of yugyeom’s face that it has him shivering and gulping out of nervousness.

“jinyoung-hyung,” yugyeom bites his lip as the other’s name falls gently into the gap between them, so muted that it couldn’t be heard by anyone but the two of them even if the studio was swarmed with a crowd. they are so close that yugyeom can almost feel him, could reach out and curl his fingers into the sleeve of jinyoung’s suit if he had the courage. but he doesn’t and so his fingers tangle together under his legs as he pulls together at least some confidence. jinyoung hasn’t shifted his stare and yugyeom feels under scrutiny, as he ever does, but it’s somehow more gentle this time. there’s heat, but it’s warm, not burning, and he doesn’t understand the sudden change. “can i ask you something?”

jinyoung nods and yugyeom braces for impact. “were you actually in love with her, hyung?” jinyoung tenses beside him, just noticeable in the rigidity of his shoulders and the sharpening of his downturned mouth, and it sends alarms ringing in yugyeom’s head to stop but he doesn’t, he truly can’t help himself, and the words continue to spill out. “or… is it the principle of it all that hurts?” because jinyoung adored her, yes, yugyeom could recognise that and he wasn’t trying to convince himself of the impossible. but there’s a difference between _loving_ and _being in love_ and obsession isn’t the truest of loves, it’s just surface level. (that man didn’t love yugyeom. he deluded himself, thought burning and branding was the epitome of romance, but his possession was anything except love. yugyeom knows love in the boy in front of him and self-destructing in it, not the man who lashed out in the name of yugyeom’s heart.) “because you seem... sad over it but you haven’t even mentioned missing her.” yugyeom may not be as astute as others but he can pick apart the words of those he knows well so easily and jinyoung has been suspiciously silent over the focal point of the betrayal - losing her. and yugyeom doesn’t know what that means, but he wants to find out, even selfishly just for his own sake of mind.

jinyoung’s lips purse, head dropping forward with a little lost sigh. “you’re perceptive, yugyeom-ah,” he admits and it’s one of the first compliments yugyeom has ever heard from the wilting man, or one of the first he’s picked up on. but yugyeom can barely recognise anything outside the blur that enforces itself upon him, the haze that only allows one thought to settle - jinyoung wasn’t, isn’t, in love with her. “i thought it would get there eventually.” there’s a physical show of relaxing but the stress is present in his hard eyes and the wrinkles around them, present out of pressure and not laughter. “everyone kept telling me to get with her, but it was- i didn’t-” he stutters, trying to find balance in his shaking chords, and yugyeom is an idiot, a whipped idiot who falls too easily and rushes into things without thinking, an idiot who unlocks his fingers and carefully curls them around jinyoung’s fist. jinyoung pauses, blinks and stares unwaveringly at their hands and yugyeom is sure his face is on fire with the blush that cascades over his pale cheeks.

“it’s okay, hyung,” he murmurs, softly.

jinyoung meets his gaze, wide eyes youthful almost with the sudden sense of innocent confusion that glosses over them. he won’t understand that yugyeom can feel his stone cold heart cracking into pieces in his own chest, he won’t understand why yugyeom’s skin is so corpse cold against his own but his ears are slowly turning siren red, he won’t and will never understand that witnessing this hurt is killing yugyeom inside. the contact is as much for yugyeom’s benefit as it is for jinyoung’s and jinyoung softens into the show of what he’ll believe is comradery as yugyeom smiles encouragingly at him.

“i tried my best to fall in love with her.” jinyoung confesses and yugyeom nods along, partially in motivation because he’s never heard jinyoung this raw and unstripped, but partially because he understands the reverse. he tried to drag himself out of love. it never worked. “i liked her, gyeom-ah, i really did but…” yugyeom watches, unaware, unknowing. “it can sometimes be hard to fall for someone when you’re so stuck on someone else.” and then he cracks. “she was everything i was supposed to want and i clung to that but… she wasn’t _him_ ” and then he shatters. “and in the end, she was never like him either, i know he wouldn’t have done that. but then again, no one is like him. maybe this a sign romance is never going to work for me.” jinyoung laughs, utterly ignorant of the saddened acceptance that passes over yugyeom’s features.

_he’s in love still. and that person still isn’t you._

“she wasn’t good enough for you,” yugyeom blurts out and there’s a sudden want to slap a hand over his mouth, a cursing in his head of how stupid he is for being so open about his own emotions, but yugyeom is entirely too swarmed by his own feelings to care about rationality. “i would have said something sooner but i knew no one would believe me.” it’s relieving to get it off his chest but at the same moment, it’s so overwhelming. he’s hid this - the knowledge that she was never worthy of jinyoung’s attention - for so long out of unadulterated fear that no one would accept his observations, because even if he knows better, he’s still seen as the gullible boy his hyungs can’t quite let go of. “but i want to tell you what i would have told you before,” yugyeom sees in jinyoung’s dark eyes an enticing galaxy, a universe of beauty unknown, pulling him into his orbit, and so he doesn’t think of anything but him. “you deserve better than this, hyung.”

yugyeom has become silent. he doesn’t explain, doesn’t travel deeper with his words, doesn’t fall into continued defences with no end. he doesn’t need to. jinyoung can pick up on his not-so-hidden meaning enough - _this wasn’t your fault, don’t let it rule your life, move onto better things and lose yourself in them_ \- that yugyeom witnesses him blossom, a smile, a true one, unfolding on his forever frowning lips as he looks upon yugyeom in a fond, unknown way that has comforting warmth settling across his entire form. his fist uncurls under yugyeom’s grasp and yugyeom expects him to pull away, to slip back into his suit of desensitized unfeelingness as if nothing ever happened, as if he wasn’t in pieces on an art studio floor and as if yugyeom wasn’t the one sewing him back together again. but he doesn’t. his hand twists until it’s palm to palm with yugyeom’s own and his fingers glide through the gaps between yugyeom’s own, as effortless as it shouldn’t be with their fingers tangled and intertwined. yugyeom’s nerves are frazzled and his headspace is foggy and he doesn’t truly have an answer for why jinyoung has suddenly turned so tender, but he can’t find it in him to search for the truth that’s staring him directly in the face. he’s so unaccustomed to gentle touches and jinyoung’s hand is so warm against his own that he melts into the touch despite the red flaring so obviously across his face.

“in some ways, i’m lucky,” jinyoung mumbles, his thumb dragging over yugyeom’s knuckles, over the scars that litter them from when they split and bled all over his bedroom floor. “it could have been worse,” he continues, voice cracking and hoarse and far too bitter in a complete contrast to the near loving way he’s considering the equally troubled boy in front of him. “much worse.” jinyoung pauses, as if considering something, his eyes scanning quickly over yugyeom from his shifting eyes that can’t quite keep focused to his trembling hand in jinyoung’s. “i wish i could have stopped this from ever happening to you, gyeom-ah. i don’t know how. part of me knows i would have taken your place in a heartbeat.” the words shudder through yugyeom, as erratic as his never steady heartbeat, electricity passing over his skin where jinyoung touches. (he feels trapped by jinyoung’s enticing aura. yugyeom thought he knew confinement in a chair pushed against the bedroom’s handle and screaming till his lungs ached to be let out. but, imprisoned in jinyoung’s embrace, locked hand by hand, he thinks he can somehow appreciate never letting go.)

“it’s okay, hyung,” yugyeom attempts a smile, but it strains unconsciously and uneasily at the sudden influx of memories he’d rather erase from his jumbled mind. there’s no cheeks puffing up or teeth on show or eyes squeezed shut, just his mouth forced up in an unnatural curve. jinyoung squeezes his hand, reassuringly, and it’s so fresh to him, a jinyoung who doesn’t peer down on him with scorn and instead is caring and soft and kind. it makes him wonder if jinyoung has always been this sweet-tempered, if yugyeom just hadn’t paid enough attention when it counted. “as much as i wish it wasn’t, that time… it’s a part of me now.” and it is, neither of them can deny that. those moments, they malformed him, transformed him into someone far too different. yugyeom questions if jinyoung misses the boy who looked upon his teasing with a pure grin and responded with just as much mischief. yugyeom questions if they’ll ever see that boy return.

“it never should have been.” jinyoung insists, his voice layered thickly with pity and the kind of compassion yugyeom would only have ever seen as mocking acting before. yugyeom stares at him, eyes trailing over the exhaustion present in the droop of his frame and the dark circles under his eyes, and falls even further in love.

“about what you said before,” yugyeom starts, shifting his head subtly to the side in an almost attempt to rest it against’s jinyoung’s shoulder, to bury in his comfort and find solace there. “you said you would have taken my place,” and it pains him to the core to ever think of jinyoung in that position, voice trembling in a way that is the opposite of muted, but he can’t hide it, not in front of the man that has his heart beating so violently in his delicate chest. “but i wouldn’t want you to hurt like that.” he cracks on the last word, spelling out how close he is to tears even though his eyes are dry and he’s still forcing a his mouth into a quivering smile. jinyoung stares at him, breathes out his name and yugyeom’s so fucking gone for him, lost in his eyes and lips and everything, every little feature on the face so close to his own.

“we should go, hyung,” yugyeom whispers, stretching out his legs and making his way to stand, wobbling on his own feet out of a sheer overload of emotions. “it’s late. you’ll need sleep for tomorrow.” tomorrow is the aftermath of the fallout. tomorrow is not the calm after the storm, but the damage after a flood. it’s the day of watching the ruins of what once was and then trying to move on from it. jinyoung will need rest. and so will yugyeom, ever ready to catch the other when he falls. “i’ll drive you home.” he’s standing, fingers slipping from jinyoung’s, the loss grating, but then-

jinyoung’s fingers curl carefully around his wrist. “gyeom-ah.”

“yes, hyung?”

“stay with me. just for tonight.”

“... okay, hyung.”

the remains of what was once paintings of a pretty, manipulative girl are left behind on the studio floor.

and jinyoung only has eyes for yugyeom.


End file.
